Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau, Khaled Mishaal, said what the resistance has would liberate Palestinian detainees locked up behind Israeli bars and bring about a momentous prisoner swap deal.

Talking in an interview broadcast by al-Aqsa Radio on Tuesday night Mishaal said: “The negotiation process regarding the prisoners issue is delicate. Yet we have all the means to clutch a historic prisoner swap deal.”

Mishaal denied rumors about prisoner swap deals being currently negotiated with the Israeli occupation. He further said: “The freedom of our detainees is no bargaining chip.”

Mishaal’s statement came at a time when Israeli media outlets claimed Hamas has been declining appeals to deliberate with the Israeli side to that end.

As for Hamas’s partnership with Iran, Mishaal said none of the bonds between the two parties have been severed but the tension rocking the region has, in a way or another, affected the relationship.

He also affirmed that Hamas did not meddle in the Egyptian internal affairs, calling on the authorities to open the Rafah border crossing before Gaza’s passengers.

Mishaal held the PA unity government accountable for Gaza’s salary crisis, reiterating Hamas’s commitment to preserve all the bonds of the Cairo-brokered unity accord.

He called on the consensus government to press ahead with the implementation of the terms of the unity agreement both in Gaza and the West Bank.

The Hamas leader further slammed the international community and al-Hamdallah’s government for having dragged their feet vis-à-vis the reconstruction of Gaza, the salary crisis, and the blockade.

Member of Hamas's political bureau Mousa Abu Marzouk said that several parties started to intervene to launch new prisoner swap talks with his Movement to release Israeli soldiers captured in the Gaza Strip.In an interview with Maan satellite channel on Monday night, Abu Marzouk added that it is too early to talk about any prisoner swap deal with Israel, stressing that Israel, first, must respect its obligations under the ceasefire agreement it had signed in August.

"Hamas will not talk about anything related to Israeli soldiers before Israel implements what has been agreed upon in the truce agreement sealed on last August 26 in Cairo."

In a separate context, Abu Marzouk said the reconciliation with Fatah faction was stalled by Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and needs a political decision from him to proceed with it.

During the last Israeli war on Gaza, al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas had claimed its capture of an Israeli soldier identified as Shaul Aron during an army incursion into an area to the east of Gaza city.

Two days later, the Israeli army admitted it had lost contact with the soldier Aron and said he might have been killed during armed confrontations with Hamas fighters.

Hamas was also accused by Israel of seizing the body of a senior officer called Hadar Goldin, who was killed in eastern Rafah. However, the Israeli claim has not been confirmed or denied by the Movement.

The Israeli Occupation Authorities (IOA) re-imposed the previous sentence of the re-jailed female ex-detainee Bushra al-Tawil after being released in Wafa al-Ahrar swap deal in 2011, human rights sources said.

Ahrar center for prisoners’ studies recalled that al-Tawil was released in 2011, after spending five months of her 16-month sentence, in the swap deal. However, she was re-arrested following the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli soldiers in June.

Al-Tawil is a university student at Ramallah Media College and an activist in prisoners’ issue. Her parents were also arrested by the Israeli occupation forces more than once.

Jerusalem’s ex-prisoners, recaptured by the Israeli occupation authorities (IOA), voiced their firm disapproval of Israeli proposals to expel them from Occupied Jerusalem, reiterating their non-negotiable commitment to their right of return.

Head of the legal unit in the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, Jawad Boulos, quoted six Jerusalemite re-captured prisoners, held in the Gilboa jail, as reiterating their unyielding rejection of any “deportation deals” expected to be struck with the IOA, saying their right of return shall never be taken for “a bargaining chip.”

The lawyer’s statement came following a prison-visit he paid to the Palestinian prisoners Hussam Shahin, Aref al-Fakhouri, and Samer al-Issawi.

Meanwhile, Jerusalemite inmates opted for the appointment of a follow-up up committee to administer prisoners’ affairs at the Israeli occupation jails.

The decision comes as a reaction to the striking upsurge in the number of Jerusalemite detainees and the dire detention circumstances they have been made to endure at the Israeli occupation lock-ups.

Prisoner Hussam Shahin is expected to spearhead the committee. Names of the other nominees are to be announced sometime soon.

Lawyer Boulos further raised alarm bells over Israel’s transfer of eight Palestinian inmates in Gilboa jail to isolated cells under the pretext that a mobile phone has been found in one of the prison rooms.

More than one hundred American feminist scholars have sent an open letter to U.S President Barack Obama calling on him to drop charges against the Palestinian ex-prisoner Rasmea Odeh for hiding information about her time in Israeli jails.A statement issued by the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Ramallah, on Monday, said that the Palestinian ex-prisoner Rasmea Odeh, 67, is to be brought to court on November 4 for not giving account of her time in jail when entering US territories twenty years ago, and when obtaining US citizenship ten years ago.

The US Department of Justice arrested Odeh, from Lifta village near occupied Jerusalem, for hiding information about her detention in 1969 in Israeli jails for ten years before being released in a swap deal.

In their open letter, the feminist scholars pointed out that Odeh was subjected to 45 days of sexual and physical torture while in detention, saying that her sentence was based on a confession she made in the midst of weeks of torture.

In the US, Rasmea settled in Chicago where she became the associate director of the Arab American Action Network, a social service and community organization. There, she established the Arab Women’s Committee that promotes leadership among Arab immigrant women, challenges systems of oppression that impact Arab women’s lives and secures a positive and safe political, economic, social, and cultural environment for Arab women and their communities.

In 2013, the Chicago Cultural Alliance granted Rasmea its Outstanding Community Leader Award in recognition of her devotion of “over forty years of her life to the empowerment of Arab women.”

Now, Rasmea is being persecuted again for not giving account of her time in jail on her naturalization application in 2004.

On 22 October 2013, the US Department of Justice arrested Rasmea Odeh at her home in Chicago. The Department of Justice alleges that Odeh failed to disclose, on her naturalization application, that she had served time in Israeli jail – even though her sentence was based on a confession she made in the midst of weeks of torture.

Rasmea faces up to ten years in US prison, fines up to $250,000 and potential deportation and de-naturalization. The criminal charges she faces for alleged immigration fraud in the US are politically motivated.

Rasmea Odeh has suffered enough already. When the Israeli military arrested her, they also arrested her family members shortly after her arrest and destroyed her family’s home. Odeh’s 1969 conviction in Israel was determined by a court system that systematically abuses Palestinians’ rights, has a record of torture and sexual abuse of Palestinian women, men, and children, and convicts Palestinians at a rate of 99.74 percent, according to the letter.

The feminist scholars called in their open letter on the Department of Justice to drop the charges against Rasmea Odeh.

“We extend our deepest support to Rasmea in the face of injustice. We recognize her as a leader in the international struggle to empower women and end violence against women. We recognize the pain and suffering she endured in Israeli prisons and we honor her for testifying before a United Nations Committee in Geneva as a survivor of sexual torture.”

Odeh defense committee has called on the Palestinian and Arab community in the US to attend her trial in large numbers to show wide support for the Palestinian ex-prisoner.

Jess Sundin, of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, is a Minneapolis anti-war activist who is in Detroit to organize support for Rasmea Odeh. “We are doing a huge amount of outreach locally and nationally to make sure the courtroom is filled with supporters of Rasmea each and every day of the trial,” said Sundin.

Khalil al-Hayya, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said Israel’s security will pay the price for the delay in rebuilding Gaza after the recent Israeli offensive. Talking to al-Aqsa TV Channel on Saturday evening Hayya said: The Palestinian resistance is able to withstand any projected Israeli aggression.” He further warned that the Gazan public's patience is running out, calling on the Israeli occupation government to meet the agreements signed in Cairo and press ahead with the entry of the reconstruction materials into the blockaded Strip. Tackling the prisoners’ exchange issue, Hayya said the entire file is not currently up for discussion and will only be tabled for negotiations if its familiar entryways and means are to be re-taken up. “The blood of our Egyptian [brothers and sisters] is so dear to our hearts. We shall never allow any evil to cross into Egypt (from our side),” he maintained. He urged PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to call for elections, declaring: “We are ready to head for the elections free from any anxiety. . . However, that such elections would be exploited as a scarecrow is something we would never tolerate.”

Al-Ahrar center of prisoner studies and human rights warned against Israel's persistence in rejailing Palestinian ex-detainees who had been released as part of the Wafa al-Ahrar swap deal and making them serve their prison terms from the beginning. Director of the center Fouad Al-Khafsh stated that making Palestinian prisoners to serve their previous sentences once again after releasing them as part of the Egyptian-brokered swap deal would be like life imprisonment for most of them. Khafsh called on the Palestinian factions and the Egyptian mediator to intervene to stop Israel's violation of the prisoner swap agreement. He pointed to the size of suffering those prisoners and their families are going through as a result of this Israeli action. Israel rejailed 63 Palestinians who had been released as part of the 2011 prisoner swap deal with the Hamas Movement, and issued verdicts ordering the return of nine of them to serve their prison sentences from the start and the imprisonment of another for six months because of his health condition, according to Khafsh.

The director of the center also said that the rejailed ex-detainees include three women, namely Mona Ka'adan, Shirin Issawi, and Bushra Attawil.

The American journalist Steven Emerson revealed in a new report published by the Terrorism Research Center interesting details about Israeli soldier Oron Shaul's capture since the first days of Israel's land offensive on Gaza. According to the report, the armed wing of Hamas made a startling announcement on that Sunday evening saying it had captured soldier Oron Shaul. “To prove its claim, Hamas released photos of Oron’s ID and other items he carried on him. To further bolster its claim, Hamas hacked into Oron’s Facebook page and posted claims in Arabic, Hebrew and English that it had him. Hamas taunted the Israeli public with cruel and sadistic propaganda on the hacked Facebook page.” “On Monday, July 22, as international news reports carried Hamas’s claim of capture of Oron, the IDF really had no idea what happened to the soldier, Emerson added. The only statement made by the IDF at that point was that Oron was missing in action. Even two days later, the IDF still did not know if he had been kidnapped by Hamas or was dead.” “But in hacking Oron’s Facebook page, Hamas may have inadvertently given away the location of the terrorists who had him or his body. That’s because whenever a Facebook account is accessed, Facebook’s servers automatically keep a record of the Internet Protocol address where the account was accessed. IP addresses can provide a location of the IP address where the Facebook account was hacked.” “In addition, there was a remote possibility that Oron had been carrying his cellphone, although Israeli soldiers are not supposed to take their cellphones into battle. But if he had done so, then it was theoretically possible that Hamas had hacked into the mobile Facebook application on his phone. If the Israelis could obtain the Facebook server data as soon as possible, they might have had a chance to find the whereabouts of the terrorists who took Oron.” “Israel made an urgent appeal to the FBI for help in trying to determine the remote source or information that would be stored on Facebook servers indicating the location where Oron’s page had been hacked into.” “Upon receiving the request from Israel in Washington on July 21, the FBI immediately issued a “preservation letter” to Facebook ordering them to preserve all data saved on their server pertaining to the Oron’s account.” “The FBI contacted a United States Attorney’s Office in a nearby district to initiate the legal process to get a court order to serve Facebook for server information on the account belonging to the soldier.” However on July 22, the US Attorney’s Office received a startling response from the FBI: “Thank You for your effort, input and assistance. I regret to inform you we have been denied approval to move forward with legal process. We were told by our management we need a MLAT [a standardized legal agreement between the United States and other countries that spells out the legal and diplomatic protocols in processing requests for legal information pertaining to court cases in either the United States or in another country] in order to continue to assist our partner with the request in question.” Those words put an immediate halt to the Israeli request. “Three days later, on July 25, after an exhaustive forensic investigation, the IOF concluded that Oron Shaul was dead."

Member of Hamas's political bureau Saleh Al-Aruri said that his Movement would only disclose information about Israeli captives in Gaza on the negotiating table. In press remarks to Al-Resalah Net, Aruri stated that the information being circulated about the number and conditions of Israeli soldiers are not based on official sources. This came in response to news reports quoting Hamas sources as saying that the soldiers in captivity are alive. The Hamas official affirmed that his Movement would not provide any free information for Israel about its soldiers in Gaza. For his part, senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk said the Hamas delegation participating in the indirect truce-related talks with the Israeli side in Cairo has no information about any Israeli prisoners. Hamas had confirmed earlier that its intended talks with Israel on swapping prisoners would be held separately from the Cairo negotiations aimed at firming up the truce in Gaza.

Senior Hamas leader Mohamed Nazzal said his Movement would start soon a round of negotiations with Israel to swap prisoners, stressing that every piece of information about the number and conditions of Israeli detainees has a price. Nazzal said in remarks on his Facebook page that the Palestinian resistance has drawn lessons from previous experiences about not providing information on the number and conditions of Israeli prisoners for free. He affirmed that Hamas would keep the Israeli captives in an unreachable safe place as it had done with soldier Gilad Shalit until reaching a deal with the Israeli side. “I am confident that the sun of freedom will shine on our heroic prisoners” he concluded.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu appointed Lior Lotan, a retired IOF Colonel, as the new coordinator of negotiations over captured Israeli soldiers and projected prisoner swap deals. Earlier, Hamas senior leader Mushir al-Masri denied claims released by Israeli media sources on a pending prisoner swap deal to be struck with Hamas in return for the bodies of the two Israeli occupation soldiers, Goldin and Sharul. Israeli political analysts said Netanyahu’s nomination of Lotan to oversee the negotiations, is a sign of a looming prisoner swap deal estimated to be as fruitful as the historic Wafa al-Ahrar deal. Lotan will replace David Meidan, who retired the role after filling the coordinator position for the past three years and had taken part in the negotiations of the legendary Wafa al-Ahrar prisoner swap deal. “Israel is obliged to bring back its missing soldiers home,” Netanyahu claimed. “I would like to thank David Meidan for his devotion and professionalism in filling his role and congratulate Lior Lotan for volunteering to take over.”